John Fisher of the Oakland Athletics is determined to leave the city with a giant bag of cash on his way out. The unpopular relocation had a new twist recently.
As if the relocation couldn’t get worse for the loyal and suffering fanbase, it came out that the prices for the final home game are astronomical. If you want to sit in the third deck, then get your wallets ready. Ticket prices are well over $100 for tickets to sit in the highest sections of the ballpark.
For reference, this is while the team is being ripped from a city they’ve called home since 1968. The A’s are going to be playing their games for the next few years in Sacramento, California in a Triple-A ballpark. They will be there until 2028 at the earliest when they hope they can relocate to Las Vegas.
The Price Hike Is Ridiculous
The Oakland Athletics are in the midst of another losing season to the surprise of nobody. It’s had its bright moments led by players like Brent Rooker and Mason Miller, but they’re not a playoff team. The team is still stuck in the neverending cycle of building up stars just so they can give them away after a couple of seasons of success.
This endless loop of giving away their stars instead of keeping them is part of the reason why the fans stopped showing up as much to games. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Fisher having the tickets priced in the triple figures for the final game is the final middle finger to the fanbase. They’ve lost their players several times, their franchise, and will have to pay extreme prices just to say goodbye.
How Did We Get This Far?
There was unfortunately rarely a period where the Oakland Athletics wanted to stay in Oakland. We can go as far back as 1995 when the Haas Family sold the team to Steve Schott where the team had ownership looking everywhere but Oakland to build a new stadium. They almost got a new stadium at the Howard Terminal site in Oakland in April of 2023, but broke off negotiations when it appeared to be a done deal.
Since then, they’ve been locked in on moving to Sacramento before moving to their hopeful forever home in Las Vegas. They’ve looked at several sites there, but appear locked in on the Strip at the former site of the Tropicana. Major League Baseball controversially voted to approve relocation in November of 2023 despite extreme opposition from fans, players, and media.
The Relocation Is Not Looking Promising
What makes the situation even more of a joke is that the relocation to Las Vegas isn’t guaranteed. The Oakland Athletics are still hundreds of millions of dollars behind in funding for the stadium project. They’ve missed several deadlines and still don’t have any sort of viable plans in place for the stadium.
There is a potential future where the Oakland Athletics are stuck in Sacramento. One thing to note about Fisher is that he’s also the owner of the San Jose Earthquakes in the MLS. He got a new stadium for that team and ran that team into the bottom of the league like he has done with the A’s.
Longtime Employees Were Shown No Loyalty
Perhaps one of the most brutal aspects of this move is that the longtime employees were shown no mercy. They have employees who have worked with the organization since the 1968 relocation from Kansas City. Over half of the team’s employees are being let go ahead of their move from Oakland to Sacramento.
What makes the firings worse is that these were employees that were unrelated to baseball matters. Instead, the A’s will be looking to borrow the entire staff of the Sacramento River Cats, the Triple-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants whose stadium they will be sharing. An MLB team will be relying on a Minor League Baseball team to handle its marketing, ticketing, legal services, and community relations.
MLB Doesn’t Care About Oakland Fans
When it comes down to it, it doesn’t appear that Robert Manfred cares about the fans in Oakland. It doesn’t appear that A’s ownership cares about the fans in Oakland either. If they did, the Oakland Athletics wouldn’t have broken off negotiations on what was essentially a done deal for a new stadium in Oakland in the hope of getting massive help with a new stadium in Las Vegas.
If baseball cared about the fans in Oakland, we wouldn’t have an infamous clip of former commissioner Bud Selig labeling the Oakland Athletics as being a mistake since it took away from the Giants owning the Bay Area in 2001. There would’ve been an effort to incentivize the ownership from being the cheapest group in sports. There would’ve been a true effort to keep the team in Oakland.
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